| Defence Diving School | |
|---|---|
| Part of Maritime Warfare School | |
| Horsea Island, Portsmouth Harbour | |
 | |
| Coordinates | 50°50′10″N1°05′56″W / 50.836°N 1.099°W |
| Type | Naval shore establishment |
| Site information | |
| Owner | Ministry of Defence |
| Operator |  Royal Navy |
| Condition | Operational |
| Site history | |
| In use | 1996–present |
The Defence Diving School is a joint service diver training centre on Horsea Island in Portsmouth Harbour, run by the Royal Navy.
Construction began in September 1994. It would train around 2000 divers a year. [1]
It opened in September 1995, being previously at HMS Vernon as the Naval Diving School which joined with the Royal Engineers Diving Establishment. [2] [3] [4]
It was officially opened in early 1996, with the Sir Charles Pasley pool, by the Second Sea Lord. [5]
At first, training for the Royal Engineers and the Royal Navy was separate. Three years in the RN was required to apply to be a diver, but this policy was dropped in the late 1990s. [6]
The school graduated its first female mine clearance diver on 19 November 2010, 28 year old Lieutenant Catherine Ker. The Royal Navy had changed its admissions policy for women, after the INM had found that women were at no more risk from decompression sickness (the bends) than men. [7]
Royal Navy Mine Clearance Divers and British Army Divers carry out their basic training at the school's headquarters on Horsea Island, Portsmouth. [8] [9]
Royal Navy divers are part of the Diving & Threat Exploitation Group (DTXG). [10] British Army divers are part of the Royal Engineers or 17 Port & Maritime Regiment of the RLC. [11] [12] Army divers build, repair, and upgrade Army infrastructure underwater. [13] Navy clearance divers identify and neutralise conventional and improvised explosive threats underwater and on ships and oil rigs. [14]
All candidates must attend the Potential Divers Assessment (PDA). It is a two-and-a-half-day course that is a pass or fail. First, potential divers must pass the Divers Physical Training Test - a 1.5 mile (2.4km) run in 10.30 min, 8 chin-ups, 16 dips, and 40 sit-ups. [15] Candidates will also be physically assessed on: [16]
The facilities include a 1,000m (1km) salt water lake, a 5m diving tank, recompression chambers, and surface and underwater engineering facilities. [16] The school also possesses two Vahana diving boats based at Whale Island for use in the Harbour and the Solent. [17]
Advanced diver training is conducted at Weymouth, Falmouth, Plymouth and the west coast of Scotland. [16]
A frogman is someone who is trained in scuba diving or swimming underwater in a tactical capacity that includes military, and in some European countries, police work. Such personnel are also known by the more formal names of combat diver, combatant diver, or combat swimmer. The word frogman first arose in the stage name the "Fearless Frogman" of Paul Boyton in the 1870s and later was claimed by John Spence, an enlisted member of the U.S. Navy and member of the OSS Maritime Unit, to have been applied to him while he was training in a green waterproof suit.
The Clearance Diving Branch is the specialist diving unit of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) whose versatile role covers all spheres of military diving, and includes explosive ordnance disposal and maritime counter-terrorism. The Branch has evolved from traditional maritime diving, and explosive ordnance disposal, to include a special operations focus.
Underwater divers may be employed in any branch of an armed force, including the navy, army, marines, air force and coast guard. Scope of operations includes: search and recovery, search and rescue, hydrographic survey, explosive ordnance disposal, demolition, underwater engineering, salvage, ships husbandry, reconnaissance, infiltration, sabotage, counterifiltration, underwater combat and security.
The Clearance Divers Breathing Apparatus (CDBA) is a type of rebreather made by Siebe Gorman in England.
The Naval Special Warfare Command, commonly known as the Royal Thai Navy SEALs, is the special operations force of the Royal Thai Navy.
The Naval Diving Unit (NDU), also referred to as the Naval Divers, is the special forces formation of the Republic of Singapore Navy (RSN) responsible for conducting special operations from sea, air, and land. The formation is made up of six squadrons, specialising in explosive ordnance disposal, underwater demolition, maritime security operations, and combatant craft operations.
A clearance diver was originally a specialist naval diver who used explosives underwater to remove obstructions to make harbours and shipping channels safe to navigate, but the term "clearance diver" was later used to include other naval underwater work. Units of clearance divers were first formed during and after World War II to clear ports and harbours in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe of unexploded ordnance and shipwrecks and booby traps laid by the Germans.
Underwater demolition is the deliberate destruction or neutralization of man-made or natural underwater obstacles, both for military and civilian purposes.
A United States Navy diver may be a restricted fleet line officer, Civil Engineer Corps (CEC) officer, Medical Corps officer, an Unrestricted Line Officer who is qualified in Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Warfare (1140) or an enlisted who is qualified in underwater diving and salvage. Navy divers serve with fleet diving detachments and in research and development. Some of the mission areas of the Navy diver include: marine salvage, harbor clearance, underwater ship husbandry and repair, submarine rescue, saturation diving, experimental diving, underwater construction and welding, as well as serving as technical experts to the Navy SEALs, Marine Corps, and Navy EOD diving commands.
Horsea Island was an island located off the northern shore of Portsmouth Harbour, England; gradually subsumed by reclamation, it is now connected to the mainland. Horsea falls within the city of Portsmouth and was wholly owned by the Ministry of Defence as part of the shore establishment HMS Excellent, which maintains its headquarters on Whale Island.
Minedykkerkommandoen (MDK) or Norwegian Naval EOD Command is a clearance diver group. MDK is subordinate to the Royal Norwegian Navy. MDK is located at Haakonsvern Naval Base in Bergen and Ramsund Naval Base, in vicinity of Harstad.
Lieutenant-Commander Lionel Kenneth Phillip Crabb,, known as Buster Crabb, was a Royal Navy frogman and diver who vanished during a reconnaissance mission for MI6 around a Soviet Union cruiser berthed at Portsmouth Dockyard in 1956.
Lieutenant Commander George Gosse, was an Australian recipient of the George Cross, the highest award for extraordinary acts of gallantry away from the field of battle that could be awarded to a member of the Australian armed forces at the time. Gosse served in the Royal Australian Navy between 1926 and 1933, reaching the rank of sub-lieutenant and receiving training and experience with the British Royal Navy.
Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) divers are specialists trained to conduct underwater operations within their respective environmental commands. Divers within the CAF are qualified in sub-categories of diving: Clearance Divers, Search and Rescue Technicians (SRT), Port Inspection Divers (PID), Ship's Team Divers, and Combat Divers.
Army engineer divers are members of national armies who are trained to undertake tasks underwater, including reconnaissance, demolition, and salvage. These divers have similar skills and qualifications as professional divers. Army divers use both surface supplied "Hard hat" and SCUBA to perform their missions. In the United States Army, they are members of the Corps of Engineers. In the British Army, they may be Royal Engineer Divers or Commando Engineer Divers.
The Naval Service Diving Section (NSDS) is a specialist unit of the Irish Naval Service, a branch of the Defence Forces, the military of Ireland. The Naval Service Diving Section specialises in underwater diving tasks for the Naval Service, and since its formation in the early 1960s has become Ireland's most advanced diving team, aiding other state agencies in various specialist roles.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to underwater diving:
The Underwater Escape Training Unit (UETU) is a military training centre for survival at sea in Somerset; the site is mainly for helicopter aircrew.
Underwater Construction Teams (UCT) are the United States Navy Seabees' underwater construction units numbered 1 and 2 that were created in 1974. A team is composed of divers qualified in both underwater construction and underwater demolition. Possible tasks can be: battle damage repairs, structural inspections and assessments, demolition of waterline facilities or submerged obstructions, installation of submerged surveillance systems, or harbor and channel clearance. As needed, teams may test and or evaluate new or existing aquatic systems or equipment. Extending construction, whether vertical or horizontal, beyond the shoreline and waterline is their specialty. Reflecting Seabee tradition, teams are expected to execute underwater construction anywhere, anytime, under any conditions.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
